Oct 13

13: OCT 13

Assigned

• Sapolsky, Chapter 13, "Culture, context, public goods games, religion" (493-520) (27)

Lecture Note on Philosophical Method: "Hitting Rock Bottom"

• Direction of philosophical inquiry: toward "first principles". Where we are in our investigation (Like opening paragraph of Sapolsky today.)
• Rock bottom means: Hitting a limit to the inquiry, getting to a basic level of explanation that seems satisfactory (give example of diffs of opinion about this), in ethics finding something universal behind all of the variation.
• Comparing historical "rock bottom" answers: 1.Christian medieval (natural law); 2. Enlightenment (reason and Newtonian science); 3. Contemporary naturalism (contemp. sciences/social sciences, contemporary evolutionary theory - with MLS)

• What comes after "rock bottom"? The way up! Using the point of view we have developed to look at our experience in new ways.

Review of concepts and principles for fair contract writing

• conditions for entering contracts: non-coercion, equal standing (understanding and knowledge)
• values in contract interpretation: fairness, respect for autonomy, consent, reciprocity, transparency.
• challenges of settling contract disputes: all of these values can be both prioritized differently and applied differently. Vary by culture: tell old furniture story. How I would handle it now.

• Breakout rooms

• Questions on assignment

Sapolsky, Chapter 13,"Culture, context, public goods games, religion" (493-520)

• Context, Culture, and Moral Universals
• given all of the ways our moral judgements can be altered by context and culture, are there universals? Some forms of murder, theft, and sexual misbehavior. The Golden Rule is nearly universal.

• Schweder. autonomy,community, divinity
• Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory (coming to you Thursday)

• Cooperation and Competition

• Public goods game research - review experimental model p. 495. Rational choice theory predicts zero contribution to public good. But, research documents consistent prosociality, with some variation by culture.

• Simple version, pay to punish deadbeats version.
• Robust results: 1) Everyone is prosocial. In no culture do people just not contribute. 2) In all cultures, people punish low contributors. (Prosocial or altruistic Punishment)

• Interesting recent result: Anti-social punishment is also universal, though it's strength varies. Interestingly, the lower the social capital in a country, the higher the rates of antisocial punishment.

• research by Joseph Henrich, U BC, subjects from wide range of cultures play three simulation games: The Dictator and two versions of the Ultimatum Game. Variables that predict prosocial patterns of play: market integration, community size, religion.

• Henrich's research on fairness: Testing 1. fairness without consequence, 2. fairness as measured by strength of 2nd party punishment (Ultimatum game), and 3. fairness as measured by 3rd party punishment.

• Social Capital (early draft of Henrich book I think): market integration, community size, religion.
• World Religions and Moralizing Gods
• What is the connection between participation in world religion and prosocial play? 499: When groups get large enough to interact with strangers, they invent moralizing gods (research from Chapter 9). The large global religions all have moralizing gods who engage in third party punishment. So we do. Still. Think about that.

• Bottom of 499: Two hypotheses: 1) Our sense of fairness is an extension of a deep past in which sociality was based on kin and near kin. (don't forget monkey fairness) or, 2) Fairness is a cultural artifact (product of culture) that comes from reasoning about the implications of larger groups size.

• Note theoretical puzzle on p. 500: Read. Problem for thesis 1 that hunter gathers don't show strong senses of fairness. Are modern research methods tapping into an "artificial form of fairness"? Sapolsky thinks maybe so.

• the chapter's survey and quest for cultural moral universals continues.....

• Honor and Revenge - (mention Mediterranean hypothesis - Italian honor culture & research on southerners....)

• Collectivists -- diffs from Individualists. note 501.

• more likely to sacrifice welfare of one for group. use as means to end. focus of moral imperatives on social roles and duties vs. rights.
• uses shames vs. guilt. read 502. shame cultures viewed as primitive, but contemporary advocates of shaming. thoughts?....examples p. 503.
• gossip as tool of shaming -- as much as 2/3 of conversation and mostly negative.

• Fools Rush In -- Reason and Intuition p. 504

• How do we use insights from research to improve behavior?
• Which moral theory is best? (trick question). In this section, he's

• Virtue theory looks outdated, but maybe more relevant than we think.
• reviews the point from trolley research about the utilitarian answer from the dlPFC and the nonutilitariain from the vmPFC. Why would we be automatically non-utilitarian? One answer: nature isn't trying to make us happy, it's try to get our genes into the next generation.
• Moral heterogeneity - new data: 30% deontologist and 30% utilitarian in both conditions. 40% swing vote, context sensitive. theorize about that.
• Major criticism of utilitarian - most rational, but not practical unless you don't have a vmPFC. "I kinda like my liver". Triggers concerns that you might be sacrificed for the greater happiness.

• Sapolsky claims that optimal decisions involve integration of reason and intuition. 508:"Our moral intuitions are neither primordial nor reflexively primitive....[but] cognitive conclusions from experience. morality is a dual process, partitioned between structures for reasoning and intuition. (Note that both processes are cognitive. Intuition sometimes called "automatic inference" in both how they emerge and are applied. Saying "thank you".)

• Slow vs. Fast

• More Josh Greene research. Old problem: tragedy of the commons -- how do you jumpstart cooperation. It's a "me vs us" problem. But there's an "us versus them" version when there are two groups (cultures) with competing models for thriving.

• Tragedy of Commonsense Morality (a group version of what I call The Paradox of Moral Experience). It's really hard not to conclude that your way of doing something isn't just culturally contingent, but really true.

• Example of Tragedy of commonsense morality using Dog meat. -- used as example of how you could induce us vs. them response.

• Example of framing: Samuel Bowles example of switching people's mind set in the case of the school responding to late parents.

• Veracity and Mendacity

• interesting book [1]

• note range of questions 512. Truth telling not a simple policy matter.
• primate duplicity -- capuchin monkeys will distract a higher ranking member to take food, but not a lower one.
• male gelada baboons know when to hold off on the "copulation call"
• differences with humans: we feel bad or morally soiled about lying and we can believe our own lies.

• human resources for lying -- poker face, finesse, dlPFC comes in with both struggle to resist lying and execution of strategic lie.
• 516: neurplasticity in white and gray matter in habitual liars.
• 517: Swiss research (Baumgartner et al) -- playing a trust game allowing for deception, a pattern of brain activation predicted promise breaking. Think of a time when you broke a promise..... Did it feel like what S is describing? A noisy brain cut off by a decision.

• Subjects who don't cheat. will vs. grace. grace wins. "I don't know; I just don't cheat."